Peg Bracken, 'I Hate to Cook' Author, Dies at 89

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/ar...ref=obituaries

By MARGALIT FOX [New York Times]


Start cooking those noodles, first dropping a bouillon cube into the
noodle water. Brown the garlic, onion and crumbled beef in the oil.
Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five
minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink.

Peg Bracken, an advertising copywriter who nearly half a century ago
parlayed her irreverent wit - and her passionate dislike of a
traditional womanly duty - into a subversive best seller, "The I Hate
to Cook Book," died on Saturday [October 21, 2007] at her home in
Portland, Oregon. She was 89.

The cause was pulmonary fibrosis, her daughter, Johanna Bracken,
said.

Long before the microwave became a fixture of every home, "The I Hate
to Cook Book" was creating a quiet revolution in millions of kitchens
in the United States and abroad. Three years before Betty Friedan
touched off the modern women's movement with "The Feminine Mystique,"
Ms. Bracken offered at least a taste of liberation - from the oven,
the broiler and the stove.

"Some women, it is said, like to cook," Ms. Bracken's book began.
"This book is not for them."

First published in 1960, "The I Hate to Cook Book" was the perfect
accompaniment to the Rice-A-Roni era, ushered in two years earlier.
[See, also, "Vincent DeDomenico, Inventor Of Rice-A-Roni, 92 "] The
inventor of Rice-A-Roni, Vincent M. DeDomenico Sr., died on Thursday.

Ms. Bracken's cookbook, with illustrations by Hilary Knight, quickly
became a staple of suburban homes. Published in various editions over
the years, it sold more than three million copies. Every baby boomer's
mother, or so it seemed, had one on the kitchen shelf, its pages
stained with the makings of Stayabed Stew, Sole Survivor and Spinach
Surprise.

"The I Hate to Cook Book" emphasized speed, and if speed happened at
the expense of the rubbing and rolling and stuffing and tying and
long, sensuous, self-congratulatory simmering that James Beard was
just then making de rigueur, then, Ms. Bracken strongly suggested, so
much the better.

In Ms. Bracken's culinary canon, ingredients should be cheap, common
and above all convenient, ideally frozen or tinned. Canned soups
loomed large in her recipes. So did crushed cornflakes, powdered onion
soup mix and Spam of the pre-electronic type. So did alcohol, though
in many cases her instructions called for it to bypass the cooking
process entirely and proceed straight down the cook's throat.

Ms. Bracken's book made her a celebrity. She appeared often on
television and radio, and in the 1960s and afterward was a spokeswoman
for Birds Eye frozen foods.

Ruth Eleanor Bracken was born on Feb. 25, 1918, in Filer, Idaho, and
reared in Clayton, Missouri. (She adopted the nickname Peg as a young
woman.) She earned a bachelor's degree from Antioch College in 1940
and later worked as a freelance advertising copywriter.

Ms. Bracken's first marriage, to Mike Smith, ended in divorce, as did
her second, to Roderick Lull, to whom she was married when she wrote
"The I Hate to Cook Book." (When Ms. Bracken showed Mr. Lull the
manuscript, he responded, "It stinks," and that was more or less the
beginning of the end, their daughter, Johanna, said by telephone
yesterday.) Ms. Bracken's third marriage, to Parker Edwards, ended
with his death in 1987.

Besides her daughter, of Long Beach, Calif., Ms. Bracken is survived
by her fourth husband, John Ohman, whom she married in 1991; three
stepchildren, Ann Fragale of Great Falls, Virginia; Jack Ohman of
Portland [Oregon]; and Jim Ohman of Farmingville, New York; and 11
grandchildren.

Her other books include "The I Hate to Housekeep Book" (Harcourt,
Brace & World, 1962); an etiquette book, "I Try to Behave
Myself" (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964); and a memoir, "A Window Over
the Sink" (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1981).

Today, "The I Hate to Cook Book" is out of print, doubtless a casualty
of the Age of Arugula.